Katerina Canyon’s poems offer intimate accounts of home as the locus of danger — and homeland as a state of oppression. They are at once urgent and mysterious, full of ocean depths and surging currents. Far from nostalgia, home inspires in this poet a vigilance, keeping watch on herself and others. Her very language is charged with the alert intelligence that offers a means of survival, and metaphors that transform pain into poetry.\n—Devin Johnston, author of Mosses and Lichens\nKaterina Canyon’s poems dive into history unafraid to explore the complexity of home and family and acknowledge: the sea is filled with bones.This powerful, engaging collection where we see the billowing skirt of sunset asks again and again: How do get past our pasts?Smart, poignant, compassionate, Canyon’s poems remind us that strength happens despite one’s childhood and one’s country; they exclaim, We can choose whether we are stuck / In darkness or in light.\n—Kelli Russell Agodon, author ofDialogues with Rising Tides\nIn lush language and startling images, Katerina Canyon unveils a story in blood and bone of a speaker who survives domestic cycles of addiction and abuse, terrors handed down from the plantation through generations of her kin . . . Like the Phoenix, the speaker dares to draw near destruction to name our violent histories in order to claim a survivor’s eternal understanding of how to love, how to mother, and how to teach the world that We cannot be bound. We are free. We are infinite.\n—Katy Didden, author of The Glacier’s Wake

Surviving Home

Literature & Fiction

Canyon, Katerina

Poetry

Kelsay Books

"Inside us there are deep, unclaimed spaces..." Poet Dane Hamann writes this as he claims spaces with great precision in this book, a book about landscapes, endless, focused movement, and the meaning and value of a human body. A book of introspection, here is the puzzle of the body both safe and endangered, the body's connection to land, to seasons, to a 'you' never defined. These poems are full of extraordinary awareness of the body in space and time, the poet reaches for metaphors tied to machinery and the natural world, and the poet always has his eye on any door or doorway, window or path that might free the narrator, let him find where he must go next. These poems are vivid, intense, and obsessive. I am very glad to have this book in our world. Deborah Keenan, author of eleven collections of poems and a book of writing ideas, from tiger to prayer. Dane Hamann's A Thistle Stuck in the Throat of the Sun is a remarkable debut first collection. In it you will not find any of the gimmicky solipsism or callow irony that pervades too much of contemporary American poetry. Instead, Hamann's poems are open and expansive explorations of the suffering body's negotiations with the will and the road and the world. Both honest and elemental, one need not be a runner to know that Hamann's gift with poetic image is wonderfully right. To read these poems is to be inspired by a new poetic voice that is natural, real, and essential as your next breath. Eliot Khalil Wilson, author of This Island of Dogs Dane Hamann skillfully captures the transcendence of moving under one's own power and our biological need to connect with nature. A Thistle Stuck in the Throat of the Sun takes readers on an immersive journey down remote gravel roads, around serene lakes, and through mountainous terrain that won't soon be forgotten. Mackenzie Havey, author of Mindful Running

A Thistle Stuck in the Throat of the Sun

Hamann, Dane

Jane Blanchard's neatly-crafted verse focuses on daily life, marriage, family, travel, gardens and social conventions. But there is much wry wit, from raccoons to royals, and deft use of such forms as haiku, villanelles and sonnets to make for a pleasingly thoughtful and varied collection. -Jerome Betts, editor of Lighten Up Online Jane Blanchard writes of contemporary concerns in an easy voice that sometimes mutes, sometimes elevates the traditional forms of her verse. Teasing us with strains of T. S. Eliot, her poetry shifts to entice us with the cutting perspicuity and frustrations of a Georgian (as in "Georgia Peach") mother and housewife. Playful, ironic, sophisticated and down-home, this is a collection of metrical insights into the commonplace, with an often uncommon twist. A veritable (and delightful) Forrest Gump box of chocolates. -Paul Schreiber, poetry editor of Two Thirds North Jane Blanchard has a knack for the well-turned line and the perfectly apt detail. This book is a delight, full of poems that sparkle with wit and stick in the memory. -Brooke Clark, editor of The Asses of Parnassus

Never Enough Already

Blanchard, Jane

If one of the aims of poetry is to condense our vast, contradictory, and beautiful world into the briefest of songs, Sherri Levine’s debut collection stands as a testament to its possibility. Each poem maps out the human heart, in all its internal conflicts, with precision and grace. From broken to sustainable relationships, fears of aging to cultural explorations, familial death to gender studies, these poems probe the many paradoxes of living with an open, curious mind and heart. There is great wisdom and honesty here, vulnerability and linguistic perception. This series of meditative poems simultaneously laments and celebrates life, grounding us in a familiar world that eventually open us up to something far greater.\n--John Sibley Williams, author of As One Fire Consumes Another and Skin Memory\nPart elegy, part love letter, part confrontation of self and others, Sherri Levine’s first full-length book of poetry traces an emotional journey in which she explores the often confounding mysteries of childhood as they evolve into the traumas and occasional joys of later life: a young woman’s confusion about men, about trust, about the nature of sanity. A difficult mother-daughter relationship resolves at the end of the mother’s life, and the mother becomes, in memory, “more beautiful.” Trouble, love, forgiveness. Isn’t this the way our lives go? Levine’s fine collection ponders these vital conundrums and provides a revelatory path toward understanding them.\n--Andrea Hollander, author of Blue Mistaken for Sky and Landscapewith Female Figure\nWith an artistic, tonal range, Levine’s fearless poems ricochet between captivating and inescapable. At heart, the allure is a strangeness and the energy relentless, as she fulfills with savvy two sections titled “Girl” (then) “Unleashed.” She knows where the journey ends and will not blink. As readers, we better not either. With humor sometimes subtle sometimes dark, images gorgeous or stunning, these poems travel twists and loops and satisfy as they land on sure feet.\n--John C. Morrison, author of Monkey IslandandHeaven of the Moment

Stealing Flowers from the Neighbors

Levine, Sherri

Terry Loncaric follows her passions in words: sensual, gritty, real. She gets it, the beat of living with rich similes and metaphors, bringing us to the core of her world. Each poem draws us in, leaving us waiting for more. With a touch of whimsy, vivid imagery, and social justice, we see and feel right along with her. --Susan Schubert, author of My Place of Dreams, A Love Story The secret dance of hummingbirds and sweet deep sounds of walks in the woods; the power of faith, love, and hope to soothe and transform us as we age; the mysterious beauty of nature, art, and humanity all around us; all of these things are contained in Terry Loncaric's deeply insightful and richly rewarding book. This is truly a book to savor as each memorable image unfurls. --Joseph Kuhn Carey, author of Black Forest Dreams I am a longtime Terry Loncaric fan, and Poetry in an Age of Panic confirms her place in the world of verse. Whether the subject is personal or global, Terry brings to the page her authentic voice, distinct observations, and joyful exuberance with language. Enjoy this "glorious, unpredictable flight!" --Jennifer Dotson, author of Late Night Talk Show Fantasy & Other Poems Loncaric wields the short line to great effect, delivering rich observations of daily life in these poems of family, travels, serendipitous moments, and still life studies--what the poet calls "confetti of these ordinary moments." This is a suite of poignant reflections on life as experienced by a journalist, a poet, a seeker of meaning in the everyday. --Lynne Viti, emerita, Wellesley College, author of Dancing at Lake Montebello

Poetry in an Age of Panic: Poems of Strength, Vulnerability, Loss & Triumph

Loncaric, Terry

Some Flawed Magic

Caspers, Patricia

In Adrift a Fourth Wave, Brenda Nicholas offers a postmodern world-a theme park wasteland of billboards, magazine tear-outs, movie clips, and reruns, revealing double standards, trick mirrors, and misogynistic marketing. With brave poems that roil between tender and fierce, Nicholas guides her readers on an un-lazy river ride through dioramas of memory and message to a subliminal ocean where women are cast to be naked and behave. She suggests that the wreckage we wake from we can survive. -Tanya Grae, author of Undoll In this technicolor lament, Brenda Nicholas skillfully untangles the funhouse front America has forced women to "belly" for centuries. Whether the speaker is a Disney princess, a Bratz doll, a teen mom, or a divorcee, the women in Adrift a Fourth Wave are forced to "Frankenstein" even their most intimate relationships into existence and to make sense of beauty in a world that farcically claims to be post-Barbie. Anyone who has ever sought to turn the "bamboozled" into the beautiful or gathered the courage "to change a shoreline" will find a companion in Nicholas' charged and stunning debut, Adrift a Fourth Wave. -Alexa Doran, author of DM Me, Mother Darling Brenda Nicholas's Adrift a Fourth Wave reports from the front lines to set feminisms to music, with mothers and daughters, fast cars, and a 19-year-old babysitter who travels through time. Through intersections of pop culture imagery and shapeshifting timelines, Nicholas 'eats roses for breakfast, ' re-examines a postfeminist Little Red Riding Hood, and gives voice to Bratz Dolls and Farrah Fawcett. Nicholas's bravura performance reminds us how poetry can embrace both uncertainty and beauty in all the madness. -Daniel Nester, author of Shader and How to be Inappropriate

Adrift a Fourth Wave

Nicholas, Brenda

Quiet wonder and clear-eyed serenity flow through Michael P. Hill's poems, which find the sacred in the everyday and the modest in the sacred: a stranger's grief at the vet's office; a fisherman's view of a stalking heron; reflections on those who've left us. These are works in which simplicity is celebrated, experience vividly recalled, and the natural world impeccably observed, and all of them-all-are deeply felt. One of the particular joys of Hill's work is his apparently effortless equanimity; he's not seeking to reassure us-that would be cheap, egotistical-but that's precisely what these poems do in their calm embrace of the complicated multivalence of these works-in-progress we call lives. The reader enters the river with its swirling, sun-dappled surface and its teeming life below, then reemerges feeling more connected to the earth, more appreciative of the limited time we have on it, and more connected to those with whom we share it. It's a joy. Doug Dorst, author of S. and Alive in Necropolis Michael P. Hill's poems move with patience through the intersection of place, music, and family, all while avoiding sentimentality. Reading Junk Drawer feels like hearing a forgotten song and having it blossom into a vibrant memory. These poems are image-rich, playful, understated, and filled with careful observations about the genealogy of curating a poetic life. Whether the focus is a backyard game of catch, morning on a familiar river, or browsing in a record store, Hill's seemingly simple forms ask us to linger on experiences we might otherwise overlook as we speed past. Andrew Jones, author of Liner Notes Michael P. Hill's poems create a landscape of blue-collar beauty full of rivers, music, and family. His keen eye captures the threads that hold us close to each other and the moments and memories that make up a life well lived. Junk Drawer finds resonance in the gritty, dark corners of our world by creating a visceral intimacy with the "secret world in between." It's a collection worth coming back to again and again. Michael Garrigan, author of Robbing the Pillars

Junk Drawer

Hill, Michael P.

Music’s ineffable power has never been so lyrically rendered as in Gregory Luce’s new collection. Erik Satie, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, Charles Mingus, Richard Strauss, Nick Cave—such masters and many more appear here. Luce’s carefully crafted poems are as elegant as the songs which they so deftly capture.Nathan Leslie, Author ofHurry Up and Relax, Sibs,andBest Small Fictions Series Editor“That torpedo had our names / on it from the start,” Gregory Luce writes at the end of “Improvisation: Sunk,” one of many urgent and poignant poems navigating to the tune of destiny and knowing loss in Riffs & Improvisations. This wondrous collection gifts us inspired poetic “riffs” infused with musical sensibility, “cascading like / notes,” off the page “like Trane / soloing filigrees.” He paints vivid internal and external lyric landscapes: hospital waiting rooms, dance floors, and transports us to Paris 1920 with a breeze that “wafts over the piano.” Luce plunges into language with an arsenal of truths composing a score from the muses of lived experience—a luminous book propelling a voice we crave.Ava C. Cipri, Author of Leaving the Burdened Ground and Queen of SwordsThe stunning poems in Gregory Luce’s Riffs & Improvisations know ecstasy. They pulse, ache, and rejoice. These poems live in kitchens, juke joints, symphony halls, and most importantly, the human heart. Luce conducts masterfully. We feel the beat in a crowded Metro Station, we dance, mistaking our breathing for another’s. These poems take us into the marrow of music, where rhythm recognizes its relatives in our bones. These poems take us into cold purgatory and a river of bourbon. Luce gives us Coltrane, and much more, which means, his poems save us.Joseph Ross, Author of Acheand Raising King

Riffs & Improvisations

Luce, Gregory

That cheering you hear is the blessèd in the Elysian fields rejoicing that at last there’s a poet worth reading once again. Allen Tice has informed poise and wit in a time that has almost forgotten such qualities. A classical temperament in an age of ketchup and supermodels, he has language, and languages, and the riches of poetry, at his fingertips. These poems simply fizz with the fun of it all.\nMichael Hulse\nTice’s literary translations combine grace with wit and sober style with sparkle while also capturing the seriousness that underlies the ease of flow in a Horace or a Sappho. Verve and dash lend pace and color to Tice’s verses, but only as further adornments to his Muse’s defining gravitas.\nGareth D. Williams, 
Columbia University Department of Classics

OF COURSE,

Tice, Allen

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Kelsay Books publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kelsay Books